Monday, 27 May 2013

And I always thought: the very simplest wordsMust be enough. When I say what things are likeEveryone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourselfSurely you see that.

This post was meant as a kind of tonic (pardon the pun -- should I have said a Bloody Mary?) on what has become one of the emptier of national holidays, as the repeated excuses for work-avoidance and patriotic festivity are thought of.

Richter's photos convey this feeling of 'national blur' extremely well. Maybe we need this kind of holiday to feel part of a bigger picture, together as one, or something?Those are all such great poems, Tom, thank you for the links. I'm sure off to check under B.

Richter's paintings have always seemed expressive in a unique way, the haptic and the conceptual elements somehow existing side by side without contradiction, as also the photorealistic execution and the accidental gestural quality introduced by smear and squeegee -- that signature "blur". The paintings increasingly seem historical in a way quite apart from subject matter; as you say, the "national blur" seems to be captured there, even as old senses of nationality and geography and space and time slip away.

One of my favourite paintings of his is the portrait of his wife Sabine, which appears as the bottom image in this collection of paintings of women reading -- a context which I think helps us to see his work within a tradition.

Very interesting to see him at work in that trailer. Approaching to canvas by smearing, then reacting to it by smearing, changing or destroying, each step forward more and more difficult and less and less free, until there is nothing left to do.